Plugged Into What?

As Christians we are called to dwell on what is pure and holy (Phillipians 4:8).  In desire to dwell on what is pure and holy we seek to eliminate thoughts that are opposed to purity and holiness. Often we avoid these thoughts by avoiding media that contains such content. On a surface level this seems to be a good thing to do, but I don't believe this is quite what we are called to do.

Some of you may be aware of this Christian media review site known as PluggedIn.  PluggedIn is one of several such Christian media review sites, but it is perhaps the most popular and my personal favorite.  A review is written for each new popular movie, tv show, song, or video game.  The review provides an in-depth, but objective view on the spiritual, sexual content, profanity, drugs/alcohol, and violent content.  The media is then given a PluggedIn rating between 0 stars and 5 stars. Often times I have refused to watch a certain movie because it received a low rating.



When we limit ourselves to only "family-friendly" content, we encounter a serious problem.  The world is not full of "family-friendly" content.  It is full of sex, violence, profanity, drugs, and alcohol.  The problem with only watching these "family-friendly" films is that we are denying and perhaps even forgetting how the world actually works.  With such denial how can we be expected to take away a meaningful message?  Quite often sometimes the most powerful and practical messages are contained with a R rated movie.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be cautious of movies that contain such worldly content, I just believe we should give them a fair chance and rate them based on the underlying message and not the number of f-words used.